IViR is pleased to announce that
Dr. Raphaël Gellert
will give a lecture entitled
Reconceptualising individual autonomy in an age of digital manipulation?
on 27 June 2025
Nowadays digital manipulation can take place through so called dark patterns which refers to deceptive digital interfaces which are designed to unduly influence consumers’ decision-making process and nudge them into taking decisions that they would otherwise not have taken. This rise in digital manipulation has put a renewed focus on the concept of individual autonomy, which has translated into various new provisions adopted at EU level and which prevent practices that distorts or impairs individuals’ ability to make free and informed decisions in a digital context (e.g., AI Act, Digital Services Act, Data Act).
This talk focuses on the principle of autonomy in order to explore whether the encounter between emergent digital manipulative practices and autonomy can be taken as an opportunity to discuss an important point of critique. The critique revolves around the assumption that the autonomous liberal subject is conceived in a sort of pure, de-contextualised form, disregarding individual capacities and digital affordances alike. The critique is also consistent with post-phenomenological philosophy of technology, which takes the mediated nature of human subjects as a starting point. So, even if autonomy is about a sense of self and authorship of one’s own life, this authorship is itself the result of co-production processes, where the self is in part determined by the technological affordances at play.
This talk links various literatures and disciplines (such as -EU- law and digital technology, legal theory, post-phenomenological philosophy of science, human-computer interaction). It takes existing critiques and discussions around the concept of autonomy and looks at how these play out in the context of new digital manipulative practice. By testing and unfolding these critiques in this context, this contribution aims to show that new digital manipulative practices might paradoxically shed a new light on what we understand as individual autonomy and further, what we understand as autonomy breaches and how we regulate these.
The academic research on this topic has been done with co-author dr. Hanna Schraffenberger.
Dr. Raphaël Gellert is an assistant professor in ICT and private law, affiliated at the Radboud Business Law Institute and at the iHub (Radboud University’s interdisciplinary research hub on Digitalization and Society).
Since 2024 he is a member of the Radboud Young Academy. His current research focuses on the digital economy (e.g., dark patterns, digital unfair commercial practices, etc.). He explores this topic both theoretically (modes of operation of law, re-constitution of contemporary subjectivities, broader political rationalities) as well as more practically (empirical research, positive law).
Practical details:
Date: 27 June 2025
Time: 15:30 – 16:45 CET (Amsterdam)
Place:
– IViR Room, REC A5.24, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, 1018 WV Amsterdam.
– Online via Zoom (you will receive the Zoomlink via e-mail before the lecture).
See also the flyer. Please register below to sign up for this lecture.